Dental and cranial adaptations in Eocene Adapidae

Abstract

There is no animal living today that makes an ideal model for what an Eocene adapid was like in terms of its behavior and adaptations. Nor can one living model adequately represent a group as diverse as the Adapidae. Adapids possessed a mosaic of anatomical features, some primitive and some relatively advanced for their time. They share a few specializations (chiefly postcranial) with lemuroids, and at the same time share a number of advanced specializations with anthropoids. Most adapids weighed between 0.6 and 8.0 kg, they had relatively small brains by modern standards, their dentition indicates a range in dietary adaptations from frugivory to folivory for most species, and at least one genus (Adapts) was sexually dimorphic. Considering all of these features, an average adapid may have resembled the hypothetical combination of a gentle lemur and a squirrel monkey.